Luftwaffe

The Luftwaffe was the aerial warfare branch of Nazi Germany's military. It was formed on 26 February 1935, and its first war was the Spanish Civil War, during which its Condor Legion showed its skills in its support of Nationalist Spain's forces. World War II was its finest hour, when it fought in the greatest air battle of all time, the Battle of Britain, from 1940 to 1941 after bombing the United Kingdom in the infamous "The Blitz" period. Germany's offensives into Poland, France, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union were all assisted by the Luftwaffe's bombing of enemy targets in Germany's Blitzkrieg strategy, and it had 119,871 planes and 3,400,000 personnel during the war. After the Battle of the Bulge, its attempts at gaining air superiority were forever thwarted, and it was disbanded after the end of the war in May 1945. Its leader Hermann Goring and many of its generals were charged with war crimes such as the bombing of Rotterdam and strafing refugee camps, a result of its brutal tactics.